Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[normanack]

Okay, Beekissed, I'm really gonna sound like an idiot here, but I am one so that's okay.

Before I got chickens, I read a lot of chicken books. I had never actually seen a chicken up close. I bought my chicks at the local pet food store because it was the only place I'd ever seen chicks other than TSC, and a lot of TSC's chicks were dead when I went there.

I had no idea that there were actually local breeders around till I found them on Craigslist. When I went to see some Light Sussexes, they were four times bigger than I thought a chicken could be. That breeder was very kind and helpful to this complete novice and is teaching me a lot, mainly by example.

I think this is why so many people buy hatchery birds -- they are not plugged into the local chickenkeeping community and don't even know it's there.

And (the actual point of this post) I have no idea if there's a local mill around here. (Yet. I will find one.) This is mixed farm and rural neighborhood country, and I don't know the farmers. It never even occurred to me to look for a local mill until reading about it here.

Uninformed? Yup. Stoopid? Certainly. But I'm learning as fast as I can, and that's pretty slow. I'm really, really glad this OT thread is here. You all are a godsend to people like me. So have at it and let me know what's what!

 

[FuzzyButtsFarm]

The mill closest to me is Cargil. They make Purina and Nutrina feeds among others. At least the stuff I get is fresh. It smells good enough to eat.

 

[Beekissed]

Okay, Beekissed, I'm really gonna sound like an idiot here, but I am one so that's okay.
Before I got chickens, I read a lot of chicken books. I had never actually seen a chicken up close. I bought my chicks at the local pet food store because it was the only place I'd ever seen chicks other than TSC, and a lot of TSC's chicks were dead when I went there.
I had no idea that there were actually local breeders around till I found them on Craigslist. When I went to see some Light Sussexes, they were four times bigger than I thought a chicken could be. That breeder was very kind and helpful to this complete novice and is teaching me a lot, mainly by example.
I think this is why so many people buy hatchery birds -- they are not plugged into the local chickenkeeping community and don't even know it's there.
And (the actual point of this post) I have no idea if there's a local mill around here. (Yet. I will find one.) This is mixed farm and rural neighborhood country, and I don't know the farmers. It never even occurred to me to look for a local mill until reading about it here.
Uninformed? Yup. Stoopid? Certainly. But I'm learning as fast as I can, and that's pretty slow. I'm really, really glad this OT thread is here. You all are a godsend to people like me. So have at it and let me know what's what!

You don't sound the least bit stupid to me! True stupidity is someone who doesn't WANT to learn anything because they think they know enough. A person never truly knows enough.

You sound like you learned real quick about chickens...particularly as someone who had never even seen a chicken close up! (my mind still can't get around that one, though I know there are many who have not it still surprises me....but then, I've never bagged dog poop either, so the city life and the country life can be polar opposites and hold many things to learn for either visitor.)

You also learned real quick where to find the things you wanted to know...shows true intelligence. I'm a nurse and I wouldn't give two shakes for a nurse who won't look things up and will just pretend to know something to save face. Same with doctors...I'd far rather have a doctor that will look a drug up or an illness, than one that just guesses at what they don't remember from school.

When I first came here I asked all sorts of questions...I had been in chickens for many years but there were still things I hadn't known or experienced in my flocks. Still is. What did I quickly realize? All the people with true experience was scattered all over this forum and, besides stalking certain members, I couldn't keep up with the knowledge they could impart.

Hence the beginnings of the OT thread....HERE we can have a collective group of OTs with heads filled with chicken lore and I can read, read and read some more without picking through all the morass of threads.

 

[normanack]

. . . .someone who had never even seen a chicken close up! (my mind still can't get around that one, though I know there are many who have not it still surprises me....

Honest, I thought chickens were little things! Smaller than a football. I grew up in the suburbs where chickens did not dare to roam. (see note below)

Kind of like the first time I had a riding lesson and got to see real horses close up. I thought I'd be able to see over their backs, be able to swing a leg over them no problem. HA. This little horse-obsessed girl was afraid of them (but didn't let on or I wouldn't get to ride).

note below: Actually there was one pet chicken. I never saw it because it was eaten by a raccoon within days of arriving.

 

[ONSTAD1]

OK sorry for the long cut and paste job, but I would like a little feedback on this post. The way I figure it I don't trust any post until see at least 4-5 other people post the same the same thing. I do not know enough about chickens to know if this poster knows what they are talking about or not... I would like to believe it because on the surface it makes a lot if sense for raising healthy chickens (if it's true) and I LOVE to save money. However, I don't care to save money or labor at the expense of my chickens (5 of them presently 3 weeks old). Thanks in advance for you input.

Thanks,
Mo

Post follows:



Ask yourselves if this is truly sustainable. If ten dollars a bag seems cheap think on this:

1. Layer pellet is a poor choice in the long term because you are not saving money, nor are you enhancing the health of your flock

Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles are inefficient feed because:
a. disintegrate in ambient moisture
b. some percentage is already powder(fines) at the bottom of the bag
c. birds scatter the pellets on the ground while foraging in the hopper
d. pellets disintegrate while being consumed, some percentage is lost from the birds bill
e. a large percentage of the feed is not thoroughly digested; the hens manure is made up of poorly digested material.


2. Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles contribute towards the cycle of disease and infection by:

a. disintegrated pellet fines- a powdery material mixes with fecal material and urea on the ground as the birds habitually scratch about the substrate of their pens.
b. disintegrated pellet fines, fecal material, feather dander and environmental dust cling together to become "poultry smut" the clinging, acrid smelling stuff that coats henhouses walls, perches and wire. Poultry Smut covers everything within a twenty yard radius of a poultry yard. It coats the birds' plumage as well their eggs. Poultry smut is an ideal home for
Mycoplasmas, Psuedomonas and other potentially harmful bacterium. Poultry Smut also feeds external parasites and the odor attracts vermin. Layer pellet is not only largely wasted, it is
c. prone to mold
d. nutrients deteriorate in short time

3. Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles contribute to an unsanitary environment for both birds and people.
a. Poultry smut is inhaled
b. chicks begin their lives in crowded, overly bright ( artificially lit) environments where the air is thick with the dust of chick mash.
Because the chicks are active for extended periods of time , day and night, they cannot help but inhale feed particulates. This material becomes embedded in their air sacs, lungs and sinus cavities.
c.fecal material is copious as birds digest so little, resulting in greater potential for substrate contamination.
d. copious manure results in greater potential for fecal contamination of feedstuffs
e. heavy, wet manure, high in ammonia, produces an unhealthy environment for the birds and can become an issue in urban and suburban regions where there are laws against livestock odor or ordinances prohibiting livestock altogether
f. poultry smut clings to plumage, consequently, birds preen their feathers and in doing so ingest the material, becoming contaminated with fecal material.

I could go on and on here.

Somewhere in the last fifty or so years, someone very inventive realized that waste grain, a biproduct of agricultural commodities grown for human consumption, could be fed to livestock. Grains that are long past their prime are pulverized into fine powder and mixed with synthetic vitamins and minerals; soybean meal and so on to produce layer pellet.
The birds have to gorge on it to become satiated. It may seem relatively inexpensive for those of you that have never kept poultry in the tradition of the Great Depression.
What did poor folk have to feed their poultry then? Did the birds refuse to lay? If this were the case, why is it that poultry farming was the one form of agriculture even the poorest of sharecroppers managed to survive with?

Here is my suggestion. Save money and increase the health of your flock and your family by weaning yourselves of lay pellets, crumbles and mashes.
Why? Take a soil sample in your poultry yard and a few around your home and garden. Ask the health extension what these levels of mycoplasma could mean.
People may have been practicing this form of poultry farming for several decades, but at what cost? Who saved money? How many flocks have had to be replaced due to
infectious respiratory problems? How many hens have ceased laying two or three years into their lifespans? My grandmother's generation never replaced a hen until she were at least eight or nine.
Make that switch over to Whole Grain Scratch, skip the cracked corn if possible and do not buy any feed with raw whole soybeans in the mix.
90-95% of your laying hen's diet can be made up of these whole grains, provided that SUPPLEMENT the diet with the whole amino acids that omnivorous birds require.
That's right, chickens are not vegetarian. Are there any ingredients in your layer pellet that originated in anything but vegetable material? The Good Lord did not create a chicken to scratch the ground and give them a hooked beak to glean grains from the field like a seed eating bird or graze the pasture like a goose. Yes, your chooks can and do consume these feedstuffs but their most important nutrition is going to come from invertebrates, insects, pill bugs and the like and small vertebrates like mice. A free range chicken may
procure a nice portion of live animal food each day, but lets face it, nowhere in these Palearctic regions where we live, would a Junglefowl thrive. Domestic chickens are nothing but tamed Junglefowl. While they are genetically selected to live on inferior feedstuffs like grains and soy, it does not lead to long healthy life spans. It greatly reduces them.
People will chime in how they feed plenty of kitchen scraps to ameliorate their girls diets. But lets be real here. If your children lived on dry cheerios all day every day, would you be content with them gleaning whatever left overs were made available in the compost bucket? Where is the consistency in this form of supplementation?
If you put out bacon grease and fish guts every few days then you are meeting their dietary requirements. Vegetables- yes they will forage on them but what precisely do the birds have to gain from this vegetable material? Fiber, vitamins and a few trace minerals all valuable but useless without adequate amounts of the base amino acids required by insect eating and omnivorous bird species.

So - 90-95% of their feed can be whole grains- no waste no mess- mix in a bit of vegetable oil before feeding if it is dusty-
and only put out as much as they can eat in a day - not two weeks- it attracts vermin and comprises nutrients- resulting in a waste of feed.
The rest of the diet needs to be animal protein and animal fat plus oystershell, calcium carbonate or baked eggshell fragments.
Whole Grain Scratch - mix your own- whole corn, whole millet, whole oats, whole rye, whole barley- its your choice- and yes there are differences in nutritive values of each grain- but lets also deal with the fact that each batch of each grain can differ by a surprising count based on age and just quality- whole grain scratch provides carbohydrates- protein and satiation-
nonetheless, how much $ is whole grain scratch compared with lay pellet? Ask yourselves, how many times has the whole grain that is used to make the pellet/crumble-how many times has it had to be driven about and processed in various ways to become a processed pellet, mash or crumble?
Compare that with how much energy, fuel and so on has gone into harvesting and bagging up whole grains -without processing them into processed feed?
The difference is expressed in terms of price. The difference is substantial in the long term. Get out a calculator.

This makes for a big savings not only because it is cheaper at the onset of the purchase, but also because birds eat much less of it at the end of the day. There is little or no waste and it takes a forenight for a hen to thoroughly digest and breakdown whole grains versus a few minute with the lay pellet.

The complete nutritional balance is not reached feeding scratch exclusively. You will need to supplement some % of the diet with a high quality extruded kibble.
Many people use dried cat food. For those of you that have small enough flocks and can afford it, look into Mazuri brand exotic pheasant kibble.
Better yet, utilize Farmer's Helper brand Poultry Optimizer Kibble. Its expensive but its so packed in optimal nutrients tailored for this specific husbandry strategy- a single forty lb bag will last for months - as only 5 to 10% kibble is mixed into relatively inexpensive, waste free and mess free scratch or wiild bird seed. Additionally ~ 40% Less Feed is ingested a day.The manager puts out that much less food a day because not only do whole grains and kibble take longer to digest- they are also superior in nutrition.

I like fast food here and again, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that cheap fast food is not the best food. Just have a good long look at who is serving it. You can always tell who has been working at these joints for more than six or eight months...When you eat fast food you're hungry again a few hours later. It's designed that way.That' the point.
These big feed companies have us all addicted to fast food for our chickens. We are none the wiser because it seems cheap and the hens are not complaining.
Do yourself a favor and have a good long look at the manure your birds are producing. Take a dropping and dissolve it in a bit of warm water- inside a clear glass.
What do you see? What do you smell? That's undigested nutrients -wasted protein- wasted money staining the water. Droppings should be firm. light weight and fairly free of odor.
If not, you are wasting money and helping your birds decrease their life spans.

Again, only put out what your birds can eat in a few hours. Mix a bit of vegetable oil, or better yet bacon drippings, lard etc into the dry food to bring down the dust.
If you insist on using your lay pellet, mash or crumble, you really owe it to yourself to insure that you saturate the material Lightly with lipids of one edible sort or another.
Dont over do it and remember that sanitation is key- sterilize your feeding dishes as often as humanly possible. If you have a teenager at home playing video games or watching tv
let them know that that privilege begins only after sterilizing the feed and water dishes... it works for me until the cheeky dastards went to college...

to recap: make that switch to whole grains, scratch grain and or wild bird seed- supplement this insufficient though highly palatable and attractive grain/seed diet with
a high quality extruded kibble. For those of you on a very fixed budget, utilize your local dollar store any buy inexpensive dry catfood. Its going to be ~ 20% dry cat food to 75% grain/scratch/seed and 5% oystershell/calcium bicarbonate
If you can afford it and have smaller flocks look for Mazuri brand exotic pheasant kibble- this will be a 75% Mazuri exotic pheasant kibble to 20% grain/seed/scratch and 5% oystershell/calcium bicarbonate

For those of you a bit further on in your husbandry and stewardship, locate a retail outlet for Farmer's Helper Poultry Optimizer Kibble - when using this supplement, its only 5%-10% -depending on the breed and life cycle- kibble- to 90% grain/seed etc.+ calcium bicarbonate or oystershell.

When you do utilize extruded kibbles in place of pellets - DO NOT mix and match them. Each kibble has its own unique vitamin and mineral premix. When you mix dog kibble and cat kibble, poultlry kibble and fish kibble together you are not optimizing your diet - you are only nullifying it. Pick one supplemental kibble and use that exclusively.


Ask yourselves: how much of this "cheap" feed are my girls actually digesting versus ingesting?
What does their manure smell like? Is it reeking with ammonia? Are droppings copious, heavy and wet ? Do your birds seem like they are constantly famished?
Ever feed your kids on cheerios for a few days? How about cheerios with no milk? Think on that.

In the end, when you utilize an extruded kibble in conjunction with whole grains/scratch you can save upwards of 20% of your feed budget- and this includes limiting how much you put out twice a day- rather overfilling hoppers- you cannot limit the amount of lay pellet you put out a day because it is designed to be gorged upon.
Whole grain/scratch= grapenuts
Lay pellet/crumbles = cheerios
which is more filling?
How can you make these cereals more nutritious? By adding milk ( fat/ sugar) and fruit ( vitamins/fiber/antioxidants)

If you cannot get off your lay pellet fix, at least mix rice bran oil into the dry feed and put out dry cat food every two to three days- enough that each hen ingests ~ two tablespoons of it

 

[bruceh]

i have a question on pimched tails. is before POL or before?

to bee and all the others about country life. i am a city boy who came to the country. however i adapted to the farming community. i just have 2 regrets.
1. i did not do it sooner
2. the people i moved away from are here now. i get a new letter in the mail everyday with the new laws in place.
a. no trucks or trailers allowed to be parked on or around your driveway.
b. your back area will have no grass or trees larger than 12 inches. failure to comply will result in a fine.
c. your land has a zoning change from agricultural to residential. all residential dwellings must comply to the laws and regulations of this township. failure to do so will result in legal action.

these are just some examples of what has happened this year. i will be at the next town meeting offering to the city folks my house for sale.

if they don't buy this house . i will gladly tell them how and where they can put them rules. i paid for my land . i pay 3200.00 yearly taxes for my land. i will do what i want with my land.

get bail money all. this city boy is like the movie Walking Tall.

 

[therapydoglady]

When my grandfather got sick and I was sent to live with my parents - in town! - I took a chick with me when I moved. I was so unhappy, the chick had fully feathered out and was half grown before I ventured across the alley to meet the neighbors. They had a boy about my age, that to this very day is a regular horse's a__, but he had never seen a live chicken. Told his mother (who had so many kids she fried 2 chickens to feed them), "That's the stupidest lookin' chicken I ever saw! It only has two legs!" True Story!

 

[Erin~TheChickenLover]

OK sorry for the long cut and paste job, but I would like a little feedback on this post. The way I figure it I don't trust any post until see at least 4-5 other people post the same the same thing. I do not know enough about chickens to know if this poster knows what they are talking about or not... I would like to believe it because on the surface it makes a lot if sense for raising healthy chickens (if it's true) and I LOVE to save money. However, I don't care to save money or labor at the expense of my chickens (5 of them presently 3 weeks old). Thanks in advance for you input.

Thanks,
Mo

Post follows:



Ask yourselves if this is truly sustainable. If ten dollars a bag seems cheap think on this:

1. Layer pellet is a poor choice in the long term because you are not saving money, nor are you enhancing the health of your flock

Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles are inefficient feed because:
a. disintegrate in ambient moisture
b. some percentage is already powder(fines) at the bottom of the bag
c. birds scatter the pellets on the ground while foraging in the hopper
d. pellets disintegrate while being consumed, some percentage is lost from the birds bill
e. a large percentage of the feed is not thoroughly digested; the hens manure is made up of poorly digested material.


2. Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles contribute towards the cycle of disease and infection by:

a. disintegrated pellet fines- a powdery material mixes with fecal material and urea on the ground as the birds habitually scratch about the substrate of their pens.
b. disintegrated pellet fines, fecal material, feather dander and environmental dust cling together to become "poultry smut" the clinging, acrid smelling stuff that coats henhouses walls, perches and wire. Poultry Smut covers everything within a twenty yard radius of a poultry yard. It coats the birds' plumage as well their eggs. Poultry smut is an ideal home for
Mycoplasmas, Psuedomonas and other potentially harmful bacterium. Poultry Smut also feeds external parasites and the odor attracts vermin. Layer pellet is not only largely wasted, it is
c. prone to mold
d. nutrients deteriorate in short time

3. Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles contribute to an unsanitary environment for both birds and people.
a. Poultry smut is inhaled
b. chicks begin their lives in crowded, overly bright ( artificially lit) environments where the air is thick with the dust of chick mash.
Because the chicks are active for extended periods of time , day and night, they cannot help but inhale feed particulates. This material becomes embedded in their air sacs, lungs and sinus cavities.
c.fecal material is copious as birds digest so little, resulting in greater potential for substrate contamination.
d. copious manure results in greater potential for fecal contamination of feedstuffs
e. heavy, wet manure, high in ammonia, produces an unhealthy environment for the birds and can become an issue in urban and suburban regions where there are laws against livestock odor or ordinances prohibiting livestock altogether
f. poultry smut clings to plumage, consequently, birds preen their feathers and in doing so ingest the material, becoming contaminated with fecal material.

I could go on and on here.

Somewhere in the last fifty or so years, someone very inventive realized that waste grain, a biproduct of agricultural commodities grown for human consumption, could be fed to livestock. Grains that are long past their prime are pulverized into fine powder and mixed with synthetic vitamins and minerals; soybean meal and so on to produce layer pellet.
The birds have to gorge on it to become satiated. It may seem relatively inexpensive for those of you that have never kept poultry in the tradition of the Great Depression.
What did poor folk have to feed their poultry then? Did the birds refuse to lay? If this were the case, why is it that poultry farming was the one form of agriculture even the poorest of sharecroppers managed to survive with?

Here is my suggestion. Save money and increase the health of your flock and your family by weaning yourselves of lay pellets, crumbles and mashes.
Why? Take a soil sample in your poultry yard and a few around your home and garden. Ask the health extension what these levels of mycoplasma could mean.
People may have been practicing this form of poultry farming for several decades, but at what cost? Who saved money? How many flocks have had to be replaced due to
infectious respiratory problems? How many hens have ceased laying two or three years into their lifespans? My grandmother's generation never replaced a hen until she were at least eight or nine.
Make that switch over to Whole Grain Scratch, skip the cracked corn if possible and do not buy any feed with raw whole soybeans in the mix.
90-95% of your laying hen's diet can be made up of these whole grains, provided that SUPPLEMENT the diet with the whole amino acids that omnivorous birds require.
That's right, chickens are not vegetarian. Are there any ingredients in your layer pellet that originated in anything but vegetable material? The Good Lord did not create a chicken to scratch the ground and give them a hooked beak to glean grains from the field like a seed eating bird or graze the pasture like a goose. Yes, your chooks can and do consume these feedstuffs but their most important nutrition is going to come from invertebrates, insects, pill bugs and the like and small vertebrates like mice. A free range chicken may
procure a nice portion of live animal food each day, but lets face it, nowhere in these Palearctic regions where we live, would a Junglefowl thrive. Domestic chickens are nothing but tamed Junglefowl. While they are genetically selected to live on inferior feedstuffs like grains and soy, it does not lead to long healthy life spans. It greatly reduces them.
People will chime in how they feed plenty of kitchen scraps to ameliorate their girls diets. But lets be real here. If your children lived on dry cheerios all day every day, would you be content with them gleaning whatever left overs were made available in the compost bucket? Where is the consistency in this form of supplementation?
If you put out bacon grease and fish guts every few days then you are meeting their dietary requirements. Vegetables- yes they will forage on them but what precisely do the birds have to gain from this vegetable material? Fiber, vitamins and a few trace minerals all valuable but useless without adequate amounts of the base amino acids required by insect eating and omnivorous bird species.

So - 90-95% of their feed can be whole grains- no waste no mess- mix in a bit of vegetable oil before feeding if it is dusty-
and only put out as much as they can eat in a day - not two weeks- it attracts vermin and comprises nutrients- resulting in a waste of feed.
The rest of the diet needs to be animal protein and animal fat plus oystershell, calcium carbonate or baked eggshell fragments.
Whole Grain Scratch - mix your own- whole corn, whole millet, whole oats, whole rye, whole barley- its your choice- and yes there are differences in nutritive values of each grain- but lets also deal with the fact that each batch of each grain can differ by a surprising count based on age and just quality- whole grain scratch provides carbohydrates- protein and satiation-
nonetheless, how much $ is whole grain scratch compared with lay pellet? Ask yourselves, how many times has the whole grain that is used to make the pellet/crumble-how many times has it had to be driven about and processed in various ways to become a processed pellet, mash or crumble?
Compare that with how much energy, fuel and so on has gone into harvesting and bagging up whole grains -without processing them into processed feed?
The difference is expressed in terms of price. The difference is substantial in the long term. Get out a calculator.

This makes for a big savings not only because it is cheaper at the onset of the purchase, but also because birds eat much less of it at the end of the day. There is little or no waste and it takes a forenight for a hen to thoroughly digest and breakdown whole grains versus a few minute with the lay pellet.

The complete nutritional balance is not reached feeding scratch exclusively. You will need to supplement some % of the diet with a high quality extruded kibble.
Many people use dried cat food. For those of you that have small enough flocks and can afford it, look into Mazuri brand exotic pheasant kibble.
Better yet, utilize Farmer's Helper brand Poultry Optimizer Kibble. Its expensive but its so packed in optimal nutrients tailored for this specific husbandry strategy- a single forty lb bag will last for months - as only 5 to 10% kibble is mixed into relatively inexpensive, waste free and mess free scratch or wiild bird seed. Additionally ~ 40% Less Feed is ingested a day.The manager puts out that much less food a day because not only do whole grains and kibble take longer to digest- they are also superior in nutrition.

I like fast food here and again, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that cheap fast food is not the best food. Just have a good long look at who is serving it. You can always tell who has been working at these joints for more than six or eight months...When you eat fast food you're hungry again a few hours later. It's designed that way.That' the point.
These big feed companies have us all addicted to fast food for our chickens. We are none the wiser because it seems cheap and the hens are not complaining.
Do yourself a favor and have a good long look at the manure your birds are producing. Take a dropping and dissolve it in a bit of warm water- inside a clear glass.
What do you see? What do you smell? That's undigested nutrients -wasted protein- wasted money staining the water. Droppings should be firm. light weight and fairly free of odor.
If not, you are wasting money and helping your birds decrease their life spans.

Again, only put out what your birds can eat in a few hours. Mix a bit of vegetable oil, or better yet bacon drippings, lard etc into the dry food to bring down the dust.
If you insist on using your lay pellet, mash or crumble, you really owe it to yourself to insure that you saturate the material Lightly with lipids of one edible sort or another.
Dont over do it and remember that sanitation is key- sterilize your feeding dishes as often as humanly possible. If you have a teenager at home playing video games or watching tv
let them know that that privilege begins only after sterilizing the feed and water dishes... it works for me until the cheeky dastards went to college...

to recap: make that switch to whole grains, scratch grain and or wild bird seed- supplement this insufficient though highly palatable and attractive grain/seed diet with
a high quality extruded kibble. For those of you on a very fixed budget, utilize your local dollar store any buy inexpensive dry catfood. Its going to be ~ 20% dry cat food to 75% grain/scratch/seed and 5% oystershell/calcium bicarbonate
If you can afford it and have smaller flocks look for Mazuri brand exotic pheasant kibble- this will be a 75% Mazuri exotic pheasant kibble to 20% grain/seed/scratch and 5% oystershell/calcium bicarbonate

For those of you a bit further on in your husbandry and stewardship, locate a retail outlet for Farmer's Helper Poultry Optimizer Kibble - when using this supplement, its only 5%-10% -depending on the breed and life cycle- kibble- to 90% grain/seed etc.+ calcium bicarbonate or oystershell.

When you do utilize extruded kibbles in place of pellets - DO NOT mix and match them. Each kibble has its own unique vitamin and mineral premix. When you mix dog kibble and cat kibble, poultlry kibble and fish kibble together you are not optimizing your diet - you are only nullifying it. Pick one supplemental kibble and use that exclusively.


Ask yourselves: how much of this "cheap" feed are my girls actually digesting versus ingesting?
What does their manure smell like? Is it reeking with ammonia? Are droppings copious, heavy and wet ? Do your birds seem like they are constantly famished?
Ever feed your kids on cheerios for a few days? How about cheerios with no milk? Think on that.

In the end, when you utilize an extruded kibble in conjunction with whole grains/scratch you can save upwards of 20% of your feed budget- and this includes limiting how much you put out twice a day- rather overfilling hoppers- you cannot limit the amount of lay pellet you put out a day because it is designed to be gorged upon.
Whole grain/scratch= grapenuts
Lay pellet/crumbles = cheerios
which is more filling?
How can you make these cereals more nutritious? By adding milk ( fat/ sugar) and fruit ( vitamins/fiber/antioxidants)

If you cannot get off your lay pellet fix, at least mix rice bran oil into the dry feed and put out dry cat food every two to three days- enough that each hen ingests ~ two tablespoons of it

So, the main point of this long article is to say that you need to feed your chickens 20% dry cat food to 75% grain/scratch/seed and 5% oystershell/calcium bicarbonate? I'm interested to see what the OT's say.

 

[Meatfreak]

Mo,
Thanks, that's straight up good advice obviously backed up by many years of experience and plain old common sense. Thanks again.

Lew

 

[Beekissed]

This OT says it's mostly a load of poppycock.

In reality, it doesn't take that much thought or processing to feed your chickens in a healthy manner and I certainly never advocate for sterilization of equipment, housing, waterers, etc. It's articles like this that confuse and overwhelm a newbie into thinking that raising chickens is some science that only the nutritionist/biologist can do....trust me, it's so incredibly simple that children can raise healthy chickens.

Sterile means no germs..none. Not even the good ones that can keep an overgrowth of the bad ones at bay. If you sterilize once you have to keep doing it over and over...daily. You are dealing with the outside environment and an outside animal. That animal has a certain amount of bacteria, both good and bad, in their bowels...this is natural and normal. It is a balance and their environment needs to reflect that or you get an overbalance of harmful pathogens. Unfortunately, the more harmful pathogens grow more quickly than do the more beneficial microbials, so when you sterilize the whole area...guess who grows and reaches maturity and reproduces the quickest first? Yes...the bad guys. Growth of the good guys actually inhibits or slows and keeps in check the bad guys but this cannot happen if the bad guys get there first, get stronger first and multiply first.

News flash...chickens poop. They poop and their bowel born pathogens enter their environment...there will always be germs there. You simply cannot control all the germs by sterilizing their world...not only that, you create more problems when you do this. How do you keep a balance? Promote an environment that is naturally cleansing by fresh air. sunlight, not overstocking your soils, good drainage of any area in which animals live, culling for health and hardy animals, balanced deep litter, etc. We've been preaching it over and over on this thread.

As to the feed? Yep, I agree that all the processed feeds like pellets, crumbles and commercial producer's idea of mash are not the best bang for the buck nor do they provide the most optimal nutrition. That is why I advocate for going directly to the source where the whole grains meat the grinder and then the bag. A whole grain is going to get ground in the gizzard before ever making it into the digestive "extraction" center of the small intestines, where nutrients are started to be processed for the body's use. Grinding before they eat the whole grain or after they eat the whole grain is still grinding, so whole grain or ground grain is no matter. It must be ground to digest it.

It is why I also advocate free range on good forage.

In the end? If the best you can do is feed your bagged feeds and a penned life, then don't expect to have birds that live and produce for a long time. Just replenish your flock as needed, kill all unthrifty birds, get what you can out of the birds you have until you can no longer justify their feed, then get a new flock. A lot of people use this approach and that is one way of having eggs and meat. Just because it is not how I do it, doesn't mean everyone has to raise their food like I do.

Either way is likely much better than a commercial poultry house operation, so do the best you can and don't sweat adding this percentage or that percentage of this oil or this seed or that protein, etc. It just muddies the waters to act like it has to be that technical...heck, my granny fed whole corn. We would walk out to the coop, take a cob of field corn out of a big barrel and rub the kernels off onto the ground. The free ranged flock would run over, gobble the corn and go back to their business~her chickens lived to be a ripe ol' age and produced all year round. It ain't rocket science and those that try to pretend that it is have way too much time on their hands.